Forecastle Festival Met Attendance Expectations

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As organizers predicted, the Forecastle Festival drew in the ballpark of 65,000 attendees through three days at Louisville’s Waterfront Park.

Now, the organizers’ plan is to take a few weeks off and begin planning a 2014 Forecastle Festival sometime in August.

“We take a couple weeks off to decompress,” said Holly Weyler, spokeswoman for Forecastle.

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Organizers said earlier that they expected somewhere between 65,000 and 75,000 attendees. (That means people who bought the three-day passes are counted three times, mind you.) It’s a dramatic expansion from the more than 35,000 attendees last year—the first under a partnership with Bonnaroo producer AC Entertainment.

“I think this really was truly a benchmark year for Forecastle that has set the bar a lot higher,” Weyler said. “Everybody kind of thought last year was a benchmark year for the festival, but then we just kind of outdid ourselves.”

Weyler attributed the successes to the line-up and to positive press from the 2012 festival.

About 25,000 people were at Forecastle on Saturday, she said.

That’s not to say there weren’t complications. Animal Collective, Dan Deacon and others canceled, and weather twice interrupted the festival—Saturday for an approaching storm that never showed up, and Sunday for a torrential downpour.

Weyler said organizers were concerned about the possibility of strong winds on Saturday; on Sunday, they had less reason to worry about wind but did have attendees take cover because of the lightning.

“So, the idea was to capture the ambiance of Forecastle by having attendees describe the greatest, grossest, most fun, interesting, weird people they saw or interacted with and then to send them a message. Everyone who was recorded was asked to begin the sentence with “To the girl/guy at Forecastle who….” It was up to them to interpret and finish the sentence.”